Month: February 2008

The Common Carp was introduced a century ago and has been causing havoc in rivers, ponds and lakes ever since. (Image by Duane Raver, courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

In thousands of lakes and ponds across the country, there’s a fish messing up the water.
Some biologists say we’ve never seen these lakes the way nature intended due to the
common carp. The usual method to get rid of the common carp is to kill everything in
the lake and start over. Some biologists think there’s got to be a better way. Joel
Grostephan reports:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/feature_grostephan_021808.mp3

Transcript

In thousands of lakes and ponds across the country, there’s a fish messing up the water.
Some biologists say we’ve never seen these lakes the way nature intended due to the common carp. The usual method to get rid of the common carp is to kill everything in
the lake and start over. Some biologists think there’s got to be a better way. Joel
Grostephan reports:

Common carp are like underwater pigs. They root up aquatic plants. They constantly stir
up the mud in the bottoms of lakes, making them murky. And in some lakes, common
carp make up more than half of the total weight of fish. Peter Sorensen is a fisheries
professor at the University of Minnesota:

“With their habit of rooting around night and day, they will completely destroy the
bottoms of lakes, so they become cesspools.”

And it ruins the habitat for many birds and fish too:

“The fact is they are doing enormous damage. At a level that I don’t think people
fully realize. They are living with us, and we don’t know in many cases, what
these lakes and streams and rivers should be like and could be like.”

Common carp have been in U.S. lakes and ponds for more than a century. They came
from Europe and Asia. At the request of new immigrants, the United States government
stocked carp in lakes and rivers in the late 1800’s. Sorensen says it didn’t take long before
there were problems.

By the early 1900’s, it clicked this was a huge mistake, and they started to remove
them. Good records were not kept, and Sorensen says the overall impression is that
removal efforts didn’t work. Most attempts to control the fish are still unreliable. The fish
is very tough. It spawns every year, and females produce nearly a million eggs.

Fisheries managers try to control carp the best they know how. Some hire commercial
fisherman to net the carp. They also use poison — killing all the carp and all the other
fish in the lake and then start over.

Fisheries managers currently use a chemical called Rotenone, which they say is not toxic
to humans. Lee Sundmark is with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources:

“If we see that a lake that a lake way out of balance, might have a lot of carp,
bullheads, tried biological means, and they aren’t working. Sometimes we get to the
point where we use Rotenone to treat it. We basically clean a lake out, and then we
might restock it.”

The trouble is sometimes not all the carp die. And just a handful of them can reproduce
and dominate that lake within a few years. Peter Sorensen and his team of researchers
believe there’s a better way. Sorenson says he does not object to Rotenone poisoning out-
of-hand but, he says, it’s expensive, heavy handed. He and his team have been studying
carp-infested lakes for the past three years to see if they can come up with a new method
to control the fish.

On this cold day, the biologists are surgically implanting radio tags in carp. The
scientists will be tracking these fish so they can find weak points in their lifecycle.
Prezmyslaw Bajer and his colleague Mario Traveline are about to operate on a fish they
caught:

“She will be collecting data that we will then use to remove carp from the lake. She
will be our carp spy.”

The researchers say if they can figure out the habits, and the instincts of the Common
Carp, they will able to control them in way that’s both — effective, and doesn’t kill all the
other fish in the lake. The study’s lead investigator, Sorensen, says this is important
work:

“Something must be done. This is our first, and most damaging species, and if we
don’t do something with this, that like I said, we can do something about — I wonder
what hope there is for any of them. This is to me, the one you got to take out.”

Sorensen says he hopes he can create a model that can be replicated in different parts of
the country. If he’s successful, the ponds, lakes and rivers that have been assaulted by the
carp for the last century might once again be able to host fish and other wildlife that were
forced out.

Related Links

Many holistic veterinarians think both dogs and cats can benefit from being fed fresh food. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Dr. Konrad Kruesi practices holistic medicine out of an old farmhouse in rural Vermont. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Holistic veterinarians such as Dr. Kruesi use a variety of nutritional supplements and herbs to help heal animals. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Instead of shelves filled with pharmaceuticals, most holistic veterinarians fill their shelves with natural treatments, such as these liquid herbs. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/feature_ohman_021808.mp3

Transcript

Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:

The snow’s starting to fall as I arrive at a small, yellow farmhouse. I hurry my dogs up to
the front door and step inside.

(Sound of dogs)

This is the veterinary clinic of Dr. Konrad Kruesi. He’s a holistic veterinarian with a
different approach to animal healthcare. One thing Dr. Kruesi does is to take a lot of time
teaching clients how to help heal their animals. He says it’s hard work but most clients
embrace the idea:

“Nine out of ten of them do a wonderful job. They do make food, they learn
massage, they learn to stretch their animal, they’ll buy air filters for the allergic
individual. They see that healing is a progression.”

Pet owners who switch to holistic veterinarians such as Kruesi swear by this approach,
and Neil and Joannie Alcorn are perfect examples. They found Dr. Kruesi after the local
veterinarians said they’d run out of options to help their dog Poppy. Poppy developed
complications after picking up a rare parasite, and the veterinarians tried everything from
exploratory surgery to steroids. Neil Alcorn says after ten months of this, they told him
to prepare for his dog’s death:

“The vets were now basically saying you should get prepared for the fact Poppy’s
not going to last much longer. And they didn’t have anything else to offer.”

But the Alcorns decided to keep trying. They researched holistic veterinarians and came
across the name of Konrad Kruesi. Right away, Dr. Kruesi says he taught the Alcorns
how to prepare fresh, homemade food for their dog. They started with a simple puree of
natural foods and offered it to Poppy. Within a few days, their dog was showing more
interest in food for the first time in months. Dr. Kruesi then added natural supplements to
help build up Poppy’s strength. Neil Alcorn says the good results continued:

“It was so remarkable. Within between two to three months, she had been weaned
off of every single medication, including the steroids, and was beginning to function
again as a living being.”

Veterinarians such as Kruesi say this kind of care shows how a natural and holistic
approach should be part of standard veterinary treatment, but there’s no policy within the
mainstream veterinary community to link clients such as the Alcorns with holistic
veterinarians.

Dr. Craig Smith is with the American Veterinary Medical Association. He says most vets
are cautious about fully supporting holistic veterinary medicine until they see more
science:

“Unfortunately, for too many of the complementary and alternative veterinary
medical therapies, including some of the nutritional recommendations, we don’t
have the science. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, it obviously does work for some
animals. The question is how can you, as a practicing veterinarian, develop your
level of confidence to say this is going to work for your dog.”

So the larger community of veterinarians is reluctant to endorse holistic medicine as part
of standard animal care, but this doesn’t stop pet owners such as the Alcorn from
continuing to use the holistic methods for their animals. They’re much more involved in
their animals’ healthcare, from preparing meals to being part of decision making at the
local veterinary office. Neil Alcorn says they don’t need to go further than Poppy for
proof it works. She’s still going strong six years after the local veterinarians gave up on
her:

“She was sixteen years old this last September. This weekend I took her hiking for
several two to three mile hikes. And she still plays with us. She’s gray, she’s
showing her age but then so are we all. And we have every hope of sending birthday
congratulations to Dr. Kruesi on Poppy’s seventeenth birthday next September.
(laughs) Even to us, it’s a bit of an amazing story.”

Transcript

We live in a world that’s filled with noise. But when things get
too loud, the sounds can affect us in all kinds of ways. Kyle
Norris talks to one man who says that loud noises are a health,
ethical, spiritual, and environmental issue:

For Les Blomberg, it all started with a sound like this:

(Sound of Blomberg imitating buzzing)

That’s Blomberg imitating the sound of the street sweeper. It
would clean his street at four in the morning. Blomberg says he
had never thought much about noise pollution…until this
happened, and it made him all tired and cranky. Eventually
Blomberg got the city to change the time of day when it cleaned
the street.

This experience got him interested in the topic of noise
pollution:

“To me kind of at the core, noise is an issue of civility. How
you treat your neighbor. It’s an environmental issue. Noise is a
pollutant that we’re casting out. It’s a waste product. It’s kind of
like second hand smoke. It’s the waste product of our activities
that we’re casting out into the environment.”

Blomberg’s passion for noise pollution grew as he learned more
about it, and he realized it’s an under-rated, under-appreciated
problem. Now he runs the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. It’s
an organization that tries to keep the peace and quiet, the
organization connects people with noise experts and activists.
It fights for stronger noise regulations and standards, and it tests
consumer products to find out which are the quietest.

Blomberg says people usually contact him with one of three
kinds of noise problems. Jets and helicopters (sound of jet),
highway noise (sound of highway), and noises from electronic
amplification (sound of music) — like loud stereos. People tell
him these noises ruin their sleep, concentration, and quality of
life… and all those things put people in bad moods and can ruin
how they deal with other people.

“When we were evolving, when things were noisy it was
usually a warning that something wrong was happening. If the
lion walk through camp and you didn’t hear it coming, you
would be breakfast for that critter. And so we evolved to deal
with that. Our hearing works twenty-four hours a day, it can
wake us up if we hear noises in our environment.”

As humans evolved, Blomberg says that loud noises would
trigger a quick little shot of adrenaline, leading to fight or flight.
He says we still go through this stress response today, when we
hear a loud noise, even though we know it’s only a siren or an
air conditioner and not a lion.

Loud, isolated noises like a street sweeper or a leaf-blower can
be temporarily problematic, but if you’re continuously exposed
to loud noises like these over time, they can lead to serious
damage. Each year in this country 30 million people suffer
from hearing losses.

Paul Kileny is the Director of Audiology & Electrophysiology
at the University of Michigan’s Health System. He says hearing
is the essence of human communication:

“People who have significant hearing loss they have a variety of
emotional problems. They withdraw. They isolate themselves
because they have trouble hearing. They don’t socialize.”

So loud noises aren’t just an inconvenience. They can bring
about real emotional problems. Les Blomberg with the Noise
Pollution Clearinghouse says we don’t have to live in a noisy
world. Technology has the ability to make things quieter.

Noise-cancellation systems and acoustic buffering can make
cars, appliances, and even lawn equipment quieter. Engineers
can make road surfaces quieter to drive on, but these changes
cost money and will have to come from the various industries
wanting to change.

Blomberg says that’s starting to happen, but slowly. He believes
loud noises are also an ethical issue. He says it’s like the golden
rule, of treating people the way you’d like to be treated and that
we can all do a “politeness check,” by making sure we’re not
imposing our sounds on our neighbors.

Transcript

Companies are starting to add solar panels to everything from portable electronics to the
bags we use to carry those gadgets around in. Brad Linder reports on the latest trend in
portable solar power:

Voltaic Systems sells solar powered backpacks and messenger bags. Each bag has a solar
panel on the outside that can charge gadgets such as cell phones and MP3 players. It can
also charge an internal battery so you have electricity even when there’s no sun. But CEO
Shayne McQuade says the solar panels are often enough:

“We’ve got 4 watts of solar power on the outside of the bag, and it’s probably 3, 4 times
as much as most little solar chargers have. And what that means is you can basically just
plug it straight into the panel, stand in the sun, and make a phone call.”

Voltaic Systems’s bags cost between 200 and 250 dollars. The company admits that’s far
more than a typical backpack. Voltaic Systems is also preparing to launch its
first laptop case this spring.

Transcript

A conservation group says birds would get much needed help from President
Bush’s proposed federal budget. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The National Audubon Society and other organizations have been warning that
many bird species are in decline because of threats such as loss of habitat. The
President’s budget would put 36 million dollars more into wildlife refuges.
There’d be another eight million dollars for keeping track of bird populations and
helping migrating birds.

The Bush Administration has often focused on birds that are hunted. Greg
Butcher is with the Audobon Society. He says the budget initiative would help
wetlands birds:

“And that’s going to include ducks and geese that are hunted, but it’s also going
to include herons and terns, and other species that aren’t hunted. So it’s a very
habitat-focused initiative.”

Congress still has to act on the President’s budget. It contains many
controversial items, so that could delay final passage.

Related Links

Many store-bought flowers are not as rosy as they appear. They’re often grown in other
countries where the flowers are treated with pesticides that are banned in the US. Kyle
Norris reports on a new kind of flower-certification that’s trying to deal with this issue:

Transcript

Many store-bought flowers are not as rosy as they appear. They’re often grown in other
countries where the flowers are treated with pesticides that are banned in the US. Kyle
Norris reports on a new kind of flower-certification that’s trying to deal with this issue:

There’s a new certification for flowers called Florverde . It is not an organic certification.
But environmentalists say Florverde is a step in the right direction.

Craig Minowa is an environmental scientist with the Organic Consumers Association:

“It requires roughly half the pesticide use. You can only use the pesticides that are legal
here in the United States. And the farm workers need to be given a fare wage and worked
standard hours.”

Minowa says lots of companies are jumping on-board with the new certification. Dole,
the big pineapple and banana company, is the biggest importer of cut flowers in the
United States. The company recently announced their entire line of Columbian-grown
flowers will have the new certification.

Minowa says lots of flower stores and supermarkets will be carrying the Florverde-
certified flowers.

For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Critics say President Bush is trying to block part of a new law that makes the government
more accountable. The Open Government Act is supposed to improve access to
government information. But as Mark Brush reports, the Bush Administration’s recent
budget request attempts to strip a key provision of the new law:

Transcript

Critics say President Bush is trying to block part of a new law that makes the government
more accountable. The Open Government Act is supposed to improve access to
government information. But as Mark Brush reports, the Bush Administration’s recent
budget request attempts to strip a key provision of the new law:

The new Open Government Act tries to address complaints about government secrecy by
creating an impartial mediator: an ombudsman who will help resolve disputes over
information requests. But in his budget, President Bush calls for the elimination of the
new ombudsman.

Rick Blum is the coordinator of the Sunshine in Government Initiative. That’s a
collection of news media groups working for a more open government. Blum says
having an impartial mediator is critical to resolving disputes:

“Right now, if you get denied, if an agency says, ‘No, you can’t receive this document.’
Well, your only recourse is to hire a lawyer at tens of thousands of dollars, or maybe even
over a hundred thousand dollars to pursue a legal case.”

Blum says he’s hopeful that the President’s attempts to eliminate the ombudsman position
will not stand.

Related Links

Historic homes like James Boyd Brent's pictured above are beautiful, but not very energy efficient. (Photo by Diane Richard)

James Boyd Brent puts extra insulation on his doors and windows to cut down on heating costs. (Photo by Diane Richard)

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/feature_richard_021108.mp3

Transcript

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:

My neighbor James Boyd Brent had me over to his house the other day.
He lives in a beautiful old farmhouse that’s about 130 years old. It’s got tall
ceilings. Rickety staircases. Original windows, floors and doors. But what
makes it cool also makes it cold. Really cold.

James recently had an energy audit done. Today he’s showing me all the
problems he needs to fix. He greets at the door me wearing a knit hat. And, even
though he’s lanky, he looks a bit padded.

“Well, I’ve got a vest, like a t-shirt, a shirt – a very thick shirt, actually –
then a sweater and another sweater. So that’s just four layers.”

That’s because it’s really cold inside. James is a Professor of Design at the University of Minnesota. He has a
taste for beautiful old things. But that puts him in a bind. Does he sacrifice
what he loves about his old home to improve his green cred? Or does he
simply live with the howling gales blowing down his hallways?

It’s a dilemma he confronts every winter. Preserving aesthetics versus
conserving energy. He says it’s not a strict either-or. And he’s willing to
install modern conveniences when it makes sense:

“I’m not interested in being faithful to some sort of bourgeois idea about what
history is.”

To prove it, he shows me the ultra-high-efficiency furnace and water
heater he recently installed in his basement. But I notice something else
down here:

Richard: “I see light coming through there.”

Brent: “Yeah. Exactly. That’s daylight. There’s not even a window. There’s
nothing. There’s just a hole.”

“Last year it froze down here. Rollicks’s cat water froze solid. I saw her
once sort of tapping it with her paw with a look of irritation.”

We leave the basement and its gaping hole for another day. Today’s chores start in the
kitchen:

“Okay, first of all, I’m working on this door here. Actually, as you can see, I’ve
sealed this all around in layers, actually. But I’ve just decided it’s not
enough. It’s still letting in great currents of cold air coming through. So I’m
going to actually seal the whole thing, right on the outside here. I’m just
sticking that down here a bit more strongly on the bottom. Because actually, that’s where
the cold air is coming through.”

The energy audit helped James figure out where he was losing the most
heat. Windows, doors, baseboards, walls and attic all were culprits:

“The basic thing is, that’s what came out of the energy audit. That all of
this sort of stuff that I’m doing now is basically, um, the sign of a complete
loser.”

Richard: “What do you mean?”

Brent: “Well, in the sense that it’s taking up all of my time and I might as well live
in a shack.”

James is not alone. Lots of people are in the same fix, loving their
beautiful home, hating that it’s as drafty as a barn.

I talked to Paul Morin about James’s frustration. Paul is a home energy
expert. He says the taping sheets of plastic over old doors and windows
should pay off:

“That really reduces the amount of air infiltration and also adds another
insulating layer. So that’s very effective.”

Paul says there’s lots more James can do, but taping up things is cheap and easy. Now, James is not looking forward to pulling down all the film next spring. But
he’s willing to keep doing it, because it’s the only way he can
balance his appreciation for the past and his commitment to the future:

“I mean, obviously I could heat this house just by cranking up the furnace and
not worrying. But it would cost literally thousands of dollars a quarter.
And also it’s just a complete waste of energy. I do have a sort of sense of
the connection between wasting money, and also wasting energy, wasting resources
and being wasteful.”

So, like a lot of people who love their old homes, James’ weekends will
be spent sealing up his house. It’s that or spend a lot of
money on expensive upgrades, or wasting money on heat that escapes
through the drafty windows and doors. And that big hole in the
basement.

Transcript

We’re hearing a lot more from automakers these days about new
technologies that will save you gas. Most of the technologies they talk about
are not in showrooms yet. So when will they be? And which technologies
will find their way to your car first? Dustin Dwyer has some answers:

There is already one kind of car out there that will save you a lot of gas. You’ve heard of
it before. It’s a hybrid. And it seems like everyone says they want one. They say they do:

“I live in the world where I don’t deal with what people say they think, or what they give
to a survey. I live in the world where they write the check.”

That’s Mike Jackson. He’s the head of the country’s largest chain of car dealerships –
Autonation. Jackson is pretty much the prototypical, no-nonsense businessman. He’s also
somewhat of an unlikely environmentalist, but Jackson doesn’t have much faith in today’s
hybrids:

“70% of our customers want to talk about hybrids when they walk through the door.
They’re aware of it. They think it’s a great idea. And they’re predisposed to buy hybrids.
You then get them at the table.”

Jackson says that’s when the customer asks how much extra the hybrid costs, and how
long it takes to make that money up by saving at the pump. That’s when the deal falls
apart:

“And we have a two percent closing rate.”

Jackson says, plain and simple, most people just aren’t willing to pay the extra money to
get a hybrid. So he says to really cut gas use, the industry still needs mass market
solutions, and the first technology that he’s looking out for is something that Ford
announced earlier this year. Ford’s chief marketing guy, Jim Farley calls it Ecoboost:

“Which uses direct fuel injection and turbocharging to get big engine power and all that
low end torque we love from smaller, inherently more fuel efficient engines.”

Direct injection and turbocharging have been around,
but mostly as a way to make cars go faster. Now the idea is to use them on small engines
so that when a customer comes in and wants a big powerful engine, Ford can give them
Ecoboost, which promises the same power with 20 percent less gas, and 15 percent fewer
CO2 emissions. Ford plans to put Ecoboost in more than half a million cars per year
within the next five years.

In that same time frame, you can also expect to see more diesel engines coming out from
all the automakers. Diesel will get you better mileage, and it’s now cleaner in some ways
than gasoline. But it can create more smog-forming gases such as nitrous oxide.

Ethanol is also still out there. But at best, most people say today’s corn ethanol really
doesn’t save any fossil fuels when you look at what it takes to raise the corn. So the big
hope is cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from grasses, or even used tires.

Nobody’s found a good way to make it yet and Mike Jackson, the no-nonsense car
salesman, says he’s not holding his breath. Instead, he’s looking for the real game
changer – hybrid vehicles that can be charged through a wall socket and run on electricity
alone for miles before a gas engine has to kick in. Jackson expects those plug-in hybrids
on the road within five years:

“The cost-benefit ratio is going to be so compelling, and people are going to be so
enthralled at the idea they don’t have to go to the gas station, just go home and plug it into
the socket, this idea will win over American consumers.”

The auto companies are scrambling to make a plug in hybrid. Right now the race is
basically between General Motors and Toyota. Both say they might be able to build a
plug in hybrid by 2010.

The problem is the battery. To get the higher charge, hybrids need a new kind of battery –
something called a lithium ion battery. It’s the same kind of battery, it turns out, that’s
used in your cell phone, but there are some challenges scaling that up for an automobile.
Lithium ion batteries can overheat, and right now they’re more expensive than the
batteries in today’s hybrids.

But Bob Lutz at General Motors says you can bet those problems will be solved:

“Every manufacturer in the world is hot on the trail of lithium ion technology, and the
battery manufacturers all say it’s going to work.”

And once you have viable lithium ion batteries, you’re talking about cars that can get
more than 100 miles to the gallon or better.

Most people say the next step is hydrogen fuel cells. With the fuel cells, you put
hydrogen in, and the only thing that comes out of the tail pipe is water vapor.
Some in the industry say fuel cells could be ready for the mass market in the 2020s.
Mike Jackson isn’t so sure. He pegs the arrival of fuel cells at somewhere between not in
our lifetime and never.